Free The Wolves of Andover by Kathleen Kent Page B

but it’s never wise to be buggered by Spaniards.”
    Crouch could see the wavering shapes of Baker’s shoes coming to stand at eye level, and a large leather bag being dropped next to his head.
    “But worse,” Brudloe concluded, “is taking Blood’s money while you’re doin’ it. I wonder what all you’ve passed along?”
    Baker knelt down next to Crouch and began removing from the bag the instruments of his trade: gleaming prongs, probes, and small boxes studded with nails. He cocked his head at him and asked, almost sympathetically, “Shall we begin?”

CHAPTER 7
     
    M ARTHA SAT AND stared at the scarlet leather-bound book in her hands. The last words she had written with an unsteady quill blurred and dissolved into meaningless swirls that threatened to slide off the page. Patience had given her the book days ago to keep the house accounts, thinking to distract her from the terrible palsy that had fallen on her after the wolf attack.
    Upon presenting the book, Patience had said in an overly cheerful manner, “Daniel traded an entire load of cod for this book. See how it’s red, red as a cardinal’s cap. It’s rare fine, don’t you think? And look how fast the color holds. It never bleeds, even into a sweated palm.” When Martha had not reached for it, or even acknowledged her cousin’s words, sitting listlessly and staring into the fire, Patience had placed it gently on her lap and tiptoed away.
    Martha looked again at the pages and was able to read:
     
Received today, a letter from Daniel, written by a parson in Malden. He does profitable carting along the coastroads from Boston to Cape Ann. He returns for a visit in May bringing: 3 parcels of English broadcloth, cotton wicks, 1 new ax, leather hides for harnesses, and a young rooster, as the cock now in the barn is getting too old to bother the hens…
     
    Suddenly the effort to pen even a simple account of the house was overwhelming. The last few words she had written, “bother the hens,” rolled repeatedly through her mind like the last of an echo. A remembrance from childhood of swirling feathers discharged by frantic chickens in a small laying shed brought with it another, darker memory of the man whose lurching, desperate actions had created the panic. The man with whom she had once lived, and with whom she had come to believe that God, in his infinite scope, could never be found in a space as small as that inhabited by a terrified child. She watched as splatters of ink dropped from the quill poised over the page. Shaking away the old thoughts, she dipped the quill into the pot again and continued to write: “The talk with the meetinghouse men in Billerica makes much to do with Thomas and his wolves. The gossip with the women is much to do with my town dress.”
    The brittle sounds of coins being counted and recounted on the common room table, still strewn with the leavings of supper, cast an edge to the otherwise silent room. Martha could sense them—her cousin, Thomas, John, and even the children—eyeing her in a doubtful, speculative way. It was out of concern for her, she knew, for she’d lain in her bed senseless and feverish for a day following the butchering of the wolves. She had woken at night, thrashing the air with her arms and legs, moaning andshrieking defensively, until Patience took up sleeping in the room with her, bathing her head and neck with cold cloths.
    But the scrutiny of the Taylor household was also of a fearful sort, as though her screaming at night signaled some sort of separation from reason or, more darkly, the beginnings of ravings brought on by the infection from the wolf’s fang. She fingered the cut on her lip, which had already begun to heal cleanly without redness or swelling, but she knew it would leave a scar.
    She had no fever left, but her hearing, diminished from the blast of the gun, had not fully recovered; and, all through the day, a high ringing inside her head set her nerves to fire and made her